Security Metrics and KPIs

🔑 Key Takeaway: Security metrics are only useful when someone owns them and acts on trends—not when dashboards go unread. MTTD, MTTR, and patch lag are classic starting points.

Measuring security performance through metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be very useful for assessing the effectiveness of your security program, and can allow you to make informed decisions on what actions to take with regards to security.

Some examples of what could be worth recording are:

Key Security Metrics

1. Measure the time taken to detect, respond to, and resolve security incidents.
2. Track the total number of security incidents over a specified period.
3. Measure the time taken to fix identified vulnerabilities.
4. Monitor the rate of false positives generated by security tools to assess their accuracy and efficiency.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD): The average time taken to detect a security incident.
• Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): The average time taken to respond to a security incident.
• Patch Management Effectiveness: Percentage of code/systems patched within a defined timeframe.
• User Training Completion Rate: Percentage of project team members who have completed required security training.
• Security Audit Findings: Number of findings from security audits and the percentage of findings resolved within a specified period.

Further Reading

• Governance overview: how the pages of this framework fit together
• Risk Management: the risks these metrics are meant to track
• Incident Detection and Response: where MTTD and MTTR data comes from
• NIST SP 800-55: Measurement Guide for Information Security: how to build metrics that survive scrutiny